The Charleston Gaillard Center in South Carolina opened in its current form in 2015 after a major redevelopment. The facility includes the 1,800-seat Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall, a 15,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom, and three floors of City offices.
After several years of use, the Performance Hall needed a better approach to its house lighting. The Charleston Gaillard Center LED retrofit focused on reducing frequent lamp changes while keeping the decorative fixtures and much of the existing lighting system in place. If you’re considering a similar update, see our practical guide: LED Theater Lighting Retrofit: What to Check Before You Buy.
Daniel Grummer, Facilities Manager for the Gaillard Center, spoke with Canto USA about the project and the decision to use the RETRO Series LED retrofit system.
Reducing Frequent House-Light Maintenance
The existing house fixtures used two A-style lamps each. With 91 fixtures and 182 individual bulbs throughout the Performance Hall, lamp replacement had become a regular part of preparing the room for events.
“We were changing bulbs before every event, and with 91 fixtures and 182 bulbs, replacing bulbs just inside the performance hall took an hour or so,” Grummer said.
Grummer was already familiar with the RETRO Series from an earlier LED retrofit he managed at Charleston Southern University with Productions Unlimited, Inc. When the Gaillard Center began looking for a new house-lighting solution, he contacted Productions Unlimited again to evaluate how a RETRO installation could work with the Performance Hall’s existing fixtures.
Fitting LED Components Into a Shallow Fixture
The decorative houselights presented an additional challenge because the fixture bodies were relatively shallow. Rather than replacing the visible fixtures, Productions Unlimited designed a custom laser-cut aluminum plate that allowed the Canto USA LED components to fit inside the existing housings.
The update was simple in concept: remove the old interior, install the new assembly with four screws, and leave the decorative ring and globe in place. That meant the Performance Hall retained its architectural look while the lighting technology inside each housing was modernized.
Dimming Compatibility: Troubleshooting and Resolution
Initial testing went well, but a dimming inconsistency appeared as more fixtures were installed: a subset of RETRO units did not respond the same way as the others. The team traced the behavior through the existing control system to identify the source.
The team determined the existing ETC SineWave dimmers were interfering with the LED circuits. To correct the issue, the house-light circuits were moved to an ETC Sensor rack with D20 modules. After that change, the new lighting operated consistently across the Performance Hall.
That troubleshooting added time to the installation schedule; the full retrofit took approximately one week from start to finish.
Keeping the Familiar Look of the Performance Hall
The finished retrofit addressed the maintenance problem that led the Gaillard Center to pursue an LED alternative while preserving the room’s visible fixtures and architectural character.
“We were relieved not to be replacing light bulbs before every event!” Grummer said. “To the average person, you cannot tell a difference in the lighting in the theater, but for those who noticed the shadows and the filament that projected on the glass, it is night and day.”
By adapting RETRO Series LED components to the existing decorative houselights, the Gaillard Center reduced routine lamp replacement while retaining globes, rings, and the hall’s original appearance.
Canto USA’s RETRO Series Fully Dimmable LED Retrofit Houselights
Canto USA is proud to present our RETRO series. The RETRO-Fusion® 2.0 and RETRO-Passive® 2.0 are 0-100% phase dimmable (forward and reverse) variable wattage LED 2700K-6500K 80-97 CRI engines. They are designed for older SCR, TRIAC, and IGBT dimmer systems but are compatible with newer dimmer systems. A direct replacement of existing lamps, our LED retrofit can be used in a wide range of applications or even new installations. Custom and standard mounting options are available.
